Co-captain Ellis Jenkins and Scarlets ace James Davies were outstanding against South Africa and Argentina respectively and will form a formidable back-row unit with No 8 Ross Moriarty. And Gatland believes going down the dual openside flanker route will help Wales claim their second ever test series victory over the Pumas.
“It was pretty hard to leave either of them out, given that they’ve both produced Man of the Match performances in their first two games,” said Gatland.
“It’s something that we’ve done in the past. To be able to play two sevens, you’ve got to have your tight five performing well and we’re pretty happy with our tight five but we’ve made a couple of changes there.
“That tight five need to front up to allow us the luxury of having both of them in the starting line up. The way they’re both playing, we’ll just have to see how they go against Argentina on Saturday.
“We were very good at the breakdown, defensively we were really strong but it’s going to be another step up this week.”
Gatland has made five changes from the side which won the first test 23-10 in San Juan.
There are first tour starts for hooker Ryan Elias, tighthead Tomas Francis and scrum-half Aled Davies, while the only enforced change is Owen Watkin replacing the injured Hadleigh Parkes. Despite targeting a clean sweep of victories this summer Gatland is confident his exposure of squad’s younger members will stand Wales in good stead come the 2019 World Cup.
“We’ve stuck firm on what the objective of this tour is,” he said.
“Yes we want to win games and it’s important that we perform well but if we were desperate and it was all about winning, then the team would probably look a little bit different.
“We discussed that as coaches when we were picking the team, saying that we have to be true to ourselves and what we wanted to achieve. Yes it’s great that we’ve won the first two games but lets not throw everything out of the window to win the third Test for the sake of it because the bigger picture is more important.
“Saying that, we’re going to be desperate to win, we want to win and those players getting an opportunity will realise how important it is.”
